1555 in music

Events

• January 17 – Italian viol player and composer Peter Lupo joins the musicians' guild in London.
• Palestrina succeeds Orlande de Lassus as maestro di cappella of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome.
• Composer Thomas Whythorne returns to England from travels in Italy and the rest of Europe. The book he writes about his travels is now lost.^[1]
• Lorenzo de' Medici orders a violin from Andrea Amati of Cremona.

Music

• Hermann Finck – Two wedding motets:
  • Amore flagrantissimo, for five voices
  • Pectus ut in sponso, for four voices
• Jhan Gero – Two books of motets
• Orlande de Lassus – First book of madrigals (a5, published in Antwerp)
• Palestrina – First book of secular madrigals

Publications

• Nicola Vicentino – L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica ("Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice"), a treatise aimed at revising the chromatic and enharmonic genera of the ancient Greeks.
• Adrian Willaert – I sacri e santi salmi (Venice: Antonio Gardano), the first printed collection by a single composer of complete polyphonic office settings

Births

• February 25 – Alonso Lobo, Spanish composer (died 1617)
• June 11 – Lodovico Zacconi, composer and music theorist (died 1627)
• probable – Paolo Quagliati, composer of the Roman school (died 1628)

Deaths

• date unknown – Mads Hak, Danish composer
• probable – Jacob Clemens non Papa, Flemish composer (born c. 1510)

References